“Customizing a Patchwork Quilt: Consolidating Co-operative Studies Within University World” - book is dedicated to the late Canadian Professor Ian MacPherson (1939 – 2013) who was globally well known and widely respected developer and supporter of the co-operative movement. The 1995 International Cooperative Alliance Statement on the co-operative identity (ICA Statement) would neither read as it does, nor would it be implemented as it is without him.

Same time book´s basic ideas have developed from “Osuustoiminta yliopistolliseen tutkimukseen ja opetukseen. Cooperatives – From Ignorance to Knowledge” -seminar 19 October 2012 in University of Helsinki. The University of Helsinki and Pellervo-Seura r.y., the Confederation of Finnish Cooperatives supported the seminar. With this book we also want to thank these organizations. The seminar was meant as a contribution to the International Year of Cooperatives 2012. Its main objective was to convince those in charge of the curricula at the universities and in public administration to include the subject of cooperatives in the education curricula.

Book´s title is borrowed from the keynote speech Professor MacPherson gave in this seminar. He passed away one year after the seminar and this changed also the nature and the goals of this “Customizing a Patchwork Quilt: Consolidating Co-operative Studies Within University World” -book. After this editors decided to include a number of other papers, close to the overall subject of the seminar. Editors of the book (Hagen Henrÿ, Pekka Hytinkoski and Tytti Klén are indebted to the authors.

The scope the themes covered by this publication with mix of seminar papers and additional contributions is therefore considerably wider than the scope of the seminar but the goal remained the same: Build a case for the reintroduction of cooperative studies in academia.